Sequel to the success of the Snapdragon 820 & 821, Qualcomm has announced its latest SoC; the Snapdragon 835. The Snapdragon 835 uses Samsung’s latest process; the 10nm FinFET process which is an improvement over the widely used 14nm FinFET. TSMC is close behind with its own 10nm FinFET process to be featured on the MediaTek Helio X30 SoC.

Samsung’s 10nm FinFET has a smaller footprint, giving OEMs more room for larger batteries or slimmer phones. According to Samsung, the 10nm technology allows up to a 30% increase in area efficiency with 27% higher performance or up to 40% lower power consumption compared to its predecessor; the 14nm FinFET.

Another interesting inclusion is Quick Charge 4. Qualcomm’s tagline for this is “Five minutes of charging for five hours of battery life”. Qualcomm claims that this version is up-to 20% faster or 30% more efficient than version 3.0 as its not only designed to charge faster but also cooler (up to 5°C cooler). Fast charge 4 is USB Type-C and USB Power Delivery (USB PD) compliant. It uses Qualcomm’s INOV (Intelligent Negotiation for Optimum Voltage) V3.0 which utilizes the optimal power transfer level at a given thermal condition.

The Snapdragon 835 will pack the Snapdragon X16 modem which is so far the fastest 4G modem as its the first to support Gigabit download speeds. The first implementation of the X16 will be the NETGEAR Mobile Router MR1100 produced in partnership with Telstra, NETGEAR, and Ericsson. You would recall that Qualcomm had also announced Snapdragon X50 (the World’s first 5G modem) at the 4G/5G Summit in Hong Kong back in October 2016.

Devices powered by the Snapdragon 835 are expected for the first quarter of 2017.